


Bring Him Home

by marchingjaybird



Series: Reckoning [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Angst, F/M, Flashback fic, M/M, Multi, Old Man Steve, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 13:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18779278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchingjaybird/pseuds/marchingjaybird
Summary: Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.Steve Rogers returns to his original timeline both to pass on the shield and to explain where he's been.





	Bring Him Home

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up writing this in response to the end of Avengers: Endgame, so definitely don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet. I wasn't very happy with the idea that Steve would just go off and leave everyone and everything he loved behind to be Peggy's secret husband like a lot of people were implying, so I started thinking about what I thought he might actually do and how the world might be different if Captain America had always been present.
> 
> Anyway, that kind of spawned an entire AU fic series in my head, so here's the first part of it. This is definitely a prequel fic so there is a bit of a cliffhanger ending, but the next fic in the series is already halfway done, so you won't have long to wait!
> 
> Also I had some trouble posting this before and noticed that I had somehow lost my shout out to my amazing beta, lamentforboromir. Sorry, honey, you're the best and I couldn't do this without you!

_i. back to the beginning_

The sun feels good on his tired bones and he relishes the sensation. It’s not something he thought he would ever feel, and he has grown old with a grace that everyone around him envies. His kids tease him about it, the way he laughs when his knees creak, the way he smiles softly when he eases into a chair, holding his hip. The way he can just sit on the porch and soak up the entire afternoon, blue eyes wistful as the neighbor’s kids run circles in their own front yard.

His kids are both grown now, out on their own in a world that he helped shape. Perhaps he cheated a little, knew what was coming and prepared for it accordingly. But time is a tricky thing and events had transpired that he’d known nothing about and so it hadn’t been a life lived without surprise.

But it is a life that’s nearing its end. He can feel his body yearning for rest, knows that there are loved ones waiting for him on the other side. There’s just one more thing he has to do, one final task, and then he can lay his head down and rest.

Sam looks at the wedding ring on his finger as he passes over the shield, smiles a little. “Are you gonna tell me about her?” he asks.

“Nope,” Steve answers, returning the smile. “I don’t think I will.”

 

_ii. tell me about her_

The look on Peggy’s face when he showed up at her office has stayed fresh in his mind over the years.

“Steve?” she said. She lifted a hand to touch his cheek, flinched away from it, patted him instead with her fingertips. It was the same motion she’d made when she first saw his newly enhanced physique and the familiarity of it made his heart ache.

“Yes,” he answered, and then she was in his arms, so fast that he could hardly process it. She buried her face against his chest, wrapped her arms tight around his waist. He could feel her shoulders shaking as she cried, and he was not at all surprised to feel hot tears spilling down his cheeks as well.

And then she pulled away, laughing and crying, and tugged him inside, looking up and down the hall. “Quick,” she said, shutting the door behind him. “Quick, get in here, we don’t want anyone else to see you.”

“We don’t?” he laughed. Peggy smiled up at him and it was like the sun had finally come out.

“And lose you to endless questions and poking and prodding?” she said. Her makeup was a mess, and Steve wiped a smudge of mascara off of her cheek. “No, I’m going to be very selfish and keep you to myself for a little while.”

“How long?” Steve murmured, and she was in his arms again, her lips parting under his and a shudder of nervous desire raced through him. His tongue slipped past her lips and she gasped, and he lost himself to the warmth of her mouth and the softness of her body against his own.

When they finally broke apart, Peggy’s face was flushed and her lipstick was smeared across her mouth. She laughed, pushed away from him slightly, and he released her.

“I’ve made a mess out of you,” she said softly, retrieving a handkerchief from her desk.

“I don’t mind,” Steve replied. There was such warmth in her eyes when she reached up to wipe his mouth clean that it nearly melted him, and he reached out to lay a hand against her waist. One of her eyebrows shot up and she stepped back pointedly.

“How did you survive the crash?” she asked, stepping behind the desk and pulling out a mirror to fix her own appearance.

There was a strange tension in the room now, and Steve silently cursed himself. He had grown accustomed to the way people interacted in the future, the quickness with which they moved from kissing to touching to… other things. The first time he and Tony had been together had been on the top of Tony’s desk, and his brain flashed an image ( _frantic hands, sweat slick skin, Tony’s gasping, hungry mouth against his collarbone as he pushed in, one agonizing inch at a time_ ) and then another ( _Pepper’s face, serene in its pain, as she thanked him for being at the funeral, squeezed his hands, recognized the tight lines of sorrow around his eyes as a mirror of her own_ ).

“It’s a long story,” he cautioned, settling in the chair across from her desk. Peggy lowered her mirror to stare flatly at him and he laughed, trying valiantly to smother the pain that had gripped his chest at the thought of Tony.

“I have time,” she said.

“Yeah,” Steve sighed, rubbing his face. “So do I.”

 

_iii. a nice ring_

Sam takes the shield and steps away, obviously full of questions but aware of Bucky’s presence behind him, waiting his turn to speak with the old man. He pats Steve on the shoulder, smiles as he turns away, but there is confusion in his eyes, and Steve sighs. 

He doesn’t turn around as Bucky approaches him, doesn’t glance over as he sits down on the bench. They’re silent for a long time, taking in the view as Steve summons the strength to say what he needs to say.

Bucky’s hand reaches out, rests on top of his own, and he closes his eyes. It’s such a familiar sensation that he automatically turns his own hand, lacing their fingers together. He senses the shock run through Bucky’s body, feels it in the sudden stiffness of his shoulders, the tightness of his grip.

“You look like shit,” Bucky says finally, and Steve laughs.

“Funny,” he says. “You haven’t aged a day.” He watches Bucky smile out of the corner of his eye, sees the helpless sorrow in every inch of that beloved face.

“That’s a nice ring,” Bucky says, turning Steve’s hand over, staring at the gold band as it glints in the sunlight.

“It’s simple,” Steve agrees. “I didn’t want anything too fancy.”

“She’s a lucky lady.” Every syllable sounds like it costs him and Steve’s heart aches.

“She was,” he says softly, reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt. There’s a handkerchief there and he frees his hand from Bucky’s grip, laying the folded square of fabric in his lap and slowly unwrapping it.

Peggy’s ring is inside, glittering gold against the soft white of the handkerchief. Steve picks it up in his gnarled old fingers, holds it up to catch the light.

 

_iv. to love and to cherish_

He bought her the ring after a week of being back in 1945. It was a square cut sapphire flanked by two smaller diamonds and it cost him nearly all of his back pay, but he figured it was worth it. He’d thought about this and about her for so long that he wanted her to know how serious he really was.

He waited a month to give it to her, just to make sure she was as on board as he was. The war had been winding down in the months after he’d crashed the plane into the ice, and he’d returned just before the cease fire was declared. The SSR had cleared him for duty almost as soon as they’d verified his identity, but with Axis forces surrendering, there was nowhere to send him, no battles to fight.

They shipped Peggy back to the States and Steve went with her. There was some talk of keeping him in Europe until the peace accords were signed, but this wasn’t the Steve Rogers that they had known. They’d had a malleable kid before, strong and naive and eager to do his part, but when they’d made noise about keeping him behind while Peggy went to settle in to her new assignment, he had just stared steadily at them until they agreed that he was probably due some leave after all and they would make sure that he made it onto the same flight as Agent Carter.

And so they’d landed in New York together, walked the streets of Brooklyn hand in hand, and Steve figured if he had died right then and there, he probably would have died happy.

They got seperate places to keep up appearances, but more often than not they ended up staying the night together. Peggy’s initial reticence had melted away once Howard had confirmed that Steve was really Steve, and though they hadn’t quite gotten around to fucking on her desk, they weren’t exactly chaste either.

“Tell me about the future,” Peggy said from the bathroom. Steve, still in bed, laughed as he leaned over, fishing through the pile of clothes on the floor for his pants.

“You know I can’t do that,” he said.

“Not things that happen.” The water ran for a moment as she washed her face, and then she emerged, patting her skin dry with a soft towel. “Things that they had. Technology, medicine, scientific achievements, that sort of thing. Are you planning on going somewhere?”

Steve dropped his pants guiltily, hiding the ring box under the covers as she crossed the room to sit at the foot of the bed.

“No,” he answered, smiling. “Of course not. I was just looking for something.”

“In your pants,” she said. It wasn’t a question but her tone demanded an answer.

“In the sixties, America flies a rocket to the moon,” he said, hoping to distract her. “The men who fly the rocket are going to walk on it.” Peggy rolled her eyes and walked back to the bathroom. Steve watched her hips swaying beneath her robe appreciatively. 

“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” she said, “but don’t make things up.”

“I would never,” he swore, hand on his heart even though she couldn’t see him. It was thundering so fast that he thought it would explode. _Now or never, Rogers_ , he thought.

When she came back out of the bathroom, he was on one knee beside the bed, the ring box extended. Her toothbrush hit the floor, clattering against the wooden floor of Steve’s apartment. Her eyes were wide as dinner plates.

“Steve,” she whispered.

“Peggy,” he answered, his voice wavering slightly. “Will you marry me?”

Her _yes_ was very enthusiastic.

They lay in bed afterwards, Peggy’s head pillowed on Steve’s shoulder, a sleepy smile on her face as she rotated her wrist, watching the sapphire catch and reflect the lamplight. Steve breathed her in, the smell of her, the warm softness of her body pressed up against his. She was the only woman he’d ever slept with, the only one he’d ever really wanted, and he closed his eyes for a moment, wishing that it could be this easy.

But nothing ever was, and though he’d entertained thoughts of just settling in and quietly living his life, it wasn’t in his nature to sit by while the people he knew and loved suffered. As though sensing the shift in his mood, Peggy propped herself up on her elbow and stared down at his troubled face.

“What is it?” she asked, brushing his hair back.

“There’s something I have to do,” he said. “Before we can get married.” She was quiet, her brown eyes drinking him in, and after a moment, he continued.

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but Bucky is still out there. He’s still alive. The fall from the train didn’t kill him, and Hydra found him and took him back to one of their bases.” Pain closed his throat for a second and he struggled against tears, against guilt. He was leaving that Bucky behind, the one that had suffered so much, but he was in better hands with Sam and T’Challa than he could ever be with Steve. Still, it hurt so badly that he could barely breathe and he had to clutch Peggy’s hand to ground him so that he could finish.

“I couldn’t save him in my original time,” he said, his voice so soft that it was barely audible. “I didn’t know until much, much later. But in this time, I can save him. I can stop Hydra before they hurt him. I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask, but this is something that I have to do, and then when I get back we can get married.”

Peggy was silent for a long time, hugging him close until the helpless feeling passed and his muscles loosened and he rested a hand on the back of her head. She kissed his chest, stroked his stomach, traced his features with a fond smile, and then slapped him squarely across the face.

“Steve Rogers,” she said calmly, as he clutched his burning cheek in surprise. “The next time you try to valiantly leave me behind on _any_ kind of mission is the day I give you this ring back and send you on your way, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning sheepishly at her as she straddled his hips.

“Good,” she answered, leaning down to kiss the tip of his nose. “I’ll call Dugan in the morning and we can start planning the mission. For now, though…” Her hips rolled against him and Steve reached up, resting his hands on her waist and gladly allowing her to take the lead.

 

_v. the point of this_

Steve turns the ring over in his fingers, strokes the flat face of the sapphire. Peggy had worn it every day of her life, even when she was sick in bed right there at the end. The memory of it pains him, how strangely frail she’d seemed, how tired. She’d made him promise to pass the ring on to their oldest daughter, and he intends to do it, but he has a purpose here first.

“Steve, what’s the point of this?” Bucky asks, no expression on his face, no intonation in his voice. This is the hardest part. He knows that Bucky won’t understand why he did what he did, and he isn’t trying to justify himself, but he at least owes Bucky an explanation.

“We found you,” he says, continuing to unfold the handkerchief. “Before it got bad.”

“Before I was… this.” Bucky’s voice is flat still but Steve can see endless wells of pain in his eyes.

“We brought you home,” he continues. “Helped you recover.”

He pushes away the last corner of the handkerchief to reveal another plain golden band, identical to the one on his finger. It reflects the light, glows against the faded white fabric. The breath catches in Bucky’s throat.

 

_vi. til the end of the line_

It took them two years to find Bucky.

Two years of combing through transmissions, decoding secret messages, hunting down Hydra operatives and rooting out old installations. Peggy had called Dugan and Dugan had rounded up the rest of the Howling Commandos and seeing all of his old friends again, these men that he’d fought next to for years and to whom he’d never gotten to say goodbye, had been like a warm embrace.

“Back together to save Barnes, eh?” Jim Morita had laughed as he rolled a cigarette. “Just like old times.”

They were all working for the SSR now, or at least on paper they were. Peggy and Steve between them had managed to get the mission approved, though no mention of Bucky was made to their superiors. It was enough that they were doing Hydra clean up operations, and Steve harbored some small hope that perhaps their actions now would help to curtail the Hydra infiltration of SHIELD later on.

They were good at the job, just as they had been during the war, though it was complicated somewhat by the SSR’s insistence that they keep their operations secret. Steve was used to moving in secret what with having been a fugitive for several years back in his primary timeline, but it chafed that they had to be so careful. He knew what was happening to Bucky while they searched, and he wished that he could just kick the door down and knock Hydra skulls together until they told him what he wanted to know.

It was Peggy who found him in the end.

They’d set up shop in an abandoned farmhouse somewhere in Russia. It wasn’t in the best repair and there was no furniture to speak of, but they had a generator and there was a potbelly stove in the kitchen that they could use to cook meals on. Gabe was the only one of them that spoke passable Russian, but a black man in a rural area was bound to attract attention, so he spent his evenings teaching Junior and Monty how to buy fuel and supplies while Dugan argued with Frenchie about how to prepare the meager meals that they would be having.

Peggy typically spent her time combing through Hydra transmissions, deciphering the ones that came in encoded and picking through the rest for any hint that there might be prisoners held in the facilities where they originated. Early on they had been sure they’d found him, but either their intel had been bad or Hydra had discovered they were coming and whisked Bucky away before they could reach him. Whatever it was, Steve was growing increasingly impatient for results and his agitation was wearing on his friends.

He’d refused to join in on yet another card game, instead staring broodingly out the window at a blanket of churned up snow and dirty tire tracks. The last snowfall had been three days ago, just enough to make an already bleak landscape seem utterly barren. It was cold next to the window, damn near freezing, but Steve couldn’t make himself move. If he did anything, even something as simple as walking to another chair, he wouldn’t be able to stop the frustrated energy inside him and he would just end up pacing.

And then Peggy made a soft sound from the corner of the room and Steve’s back straightened. Their eyes met. She nodded slowly. From across the room, Dugan shushed Frenchie, and suddenly they were all paying attention, eyes wide with barely contained hope.

“Where is he?” Steve demanded.

“Siberia,” Peggy said. A few muffled groans, quickly stifled, greeted this statement. 

“Do you have coordinates?” Dugan asked. Peggy nodded and Steve gestured for everyone to circle around.

“Time to do some planning, ladies and gents,” he said. “This is the big one…”

It ended up being surprisingly simple; if there was one thing Steve had learned from his time with the Avengers, it was that the simpler the plan, the more likely it was to succeed. Sometimes there was no choice but to get complicated, but this rescue was well within their reach and it would only require a small amount of subterfuge.

They had a schematic of the installation and three Hydra uniforms, and it was decided that Junior, Monty, and Pinky would pose as Hydra soldiers bringing in a couple of big prizes. Dugan and Peggy were familiar thorns in Hydra’s side so they would be the prisoners, shackled and ready to undergo the same treatment as Bucky. It wasn’t difficult to forge the prisoner transfer orders; they had plenty of examples to go off of and Peggy had insisted on bringing a typewriter for just such a purpose.

Steve would take the rest of the squad - Happy Sam Sawyer, Gabe, Frenchie, and Jim - and they would circle the base, Frenchie placing explosives at regular intervals until they arrived at a side entrance, where the inside team would let them in. It was a risky plan, and one that depended almost entirely on their ability to successfully infiltrate the installation, but they all seemed confident and Steve trusted them to get the job done.

That night, after they’d packed everything up and set off, Peggy sat with Steve in the back of the delivery truck, her arm laced through his, her head on his shoulder. The truck jostled and bounced along rough roads and the cold was so intense as to be nearly unbearable. They couldn’t talk or sleep through the rough growl of the engine and the crunch of gravel and dirt, but it was enough to be together.

It took them several days to reach Siberia, and most of another to make the hike to the Hydra base. They couldn’t risk bringing the truck in that close, so Jim pulled it off the road into a copse of trees, layering branches across it until it looked like another fat little Siberian spruce.

They slept in the back of it that night and set out the next morning, moving through the countryside in cautious, spread out formations so as not to draw attention. There was enough tree cover in this part of Siberia that Steve wasn’t worried they would be spotted from the road, and the road was barely more than a dirt path through the forest. The snow had lessened as they’d driven east, and though there was none on the ground now, the wind was still bitingly cold and the journey was unpleasant at best.

Finally, though, Steve saw Junior Juniper raise his hand in the air, gesture for them all to stop. He, Monty, and Pinky were already in their Hydra uniforms, and they gathered around Peggy and Dugan, fastening shackles around their wrists and roughing up their clothes a little. All three carried extra weapons should it come to that, though Steve was hopeful that they could keep the operation as secret as possible. Until they blew the place up, he didn’t want anyone from Hydra to suspect they were being infiltrated. Fear that they would whisk Bucky away at the first whiff of trouble was like a weight around his neck, one that made him feel small and weak in a way he had not experienced since the Project Rebirth days.

“Be careful,” Dugan whispered, touching the brim of his cap with one finger. Peggy rose up on her toes and pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” she said. He gripped her hand tightly for a moment, and then she was gone, marching between Pinky and Junior with her head held high. The love in his chest was like a vise, squeezing his heart and lungs, and for a moment all he could do was think about how lucky he was. Following quick on its heels was the realization that he could very easily lose it all.

But fear had never stopped him from doing what he had to do, and so he strapped on the shield and led the others through the forest. They heard shouted questions from the front of the installation, first in Russian and then in German. Pinky answered back in German and, after a tense moment in which they all waited, wide-eyed, for the sound of gunshots, the guard at the door relaxed and waved them closer.

“Fuck me, that was close,” Gabe breathed, so soft that Steve barely heard him. They’d all been worried that the Hydra clearance codes they had were too old to be of use, but evidently Hydra either didn’t change their codes that often, or this place was out of the way enough that they hadn’t gotten the memo. Whatever the case, it seemed that Pinky had everything under control, and so they continued, weaving their way through the towering larches, occasionally swinging in close to the base so that Frenchie could crouch down and plant some unobtrusive but powerful explosives around the foundations of the building.

They circled the building this way, carefully darting close and then swinging out, pausing to listen for sounds of a struggle from inside. Steve wasn’t confident that they would hear if anything was wrong - the building was a squat, ugly thing with thick concrete walls that would likely block all sound from escaping - but he had to hope that if the operation went belly up, Dugan or Peggy would find some way to let them know.

Finally, they arrived at the side entrance and stopped, backs pressed against the building, waiting for the door to open. This was the point where the whole plan could fall apart, and Steve could feel the nervous energy coursing through his body. What if one of them couldn’t get away from the group? What if they were found out and taken prisoner? What if they were all killed?

The minutes ticked by and Steve grew more and more certain that something had gone horribly awry. _Just wait_ , he told himself. _You can’t afford to ruin this, just give them time_. But his hands clenched so tight that he felt the ache of it in his fingers, felt sweat trickling down his spine in spite of the frigid wind. He was about to give the order, about to stand up and kick down the door and fight as many Hydra troops as he had to in order to get Peggy and Bucky back, and then the door swung open with a rusty squeal and Peggy stuck her head out.

“Come on,” she whispered, gesturing for them to hurry. Her hands were no longer cuffed and she held one of Junior’s extra guns. “It hasn’t gone quite to plan, but I think we still have a solid chance.” Steve fell in step with her, following her lead as she made her way through a maze of passageways.

“What happened?” he asked.

“The usual,” she said, stopping at a corner and checking before herding them all through a doorway. “Dugan couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

The rest of the team was inside, Dugan bleeding from a small wound on his head which Monty was begrudgingly trying to bandage. “Don’t you blame this on me,” Dugan protested, laughing. He was always strangely jovial when there was about to be a fight, which might have worried Steve had it been anyone else. But he had fought beside Dugan before, knew that once the action started, Dugan could more than hold his own.

“We can discuss it later,” Peggy said, but a slight smile touched her lips as well, fading as she turned to Steve. “I think I know where Barnes is. This facility goes down about three stories into the ground, and one of the guards mentioned a laboratory on the bottom floor before we knocked him out.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Steve said immediately, hefting the shield. “Stay behind me in the stairwells, don’t shoot unless we’ve got enough room to not hit each other, and if we get seperated, meet back up at the side exit in thirty minutes. Anyone that isn’t there is going down with the building.” Frenchie nodded, and Steve surveyed the grim faces of the Commandos as they prepared to walk into battle. He hoped he’d given himself enough time to find Bucky, and knew that if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t make it to the rendezvous. He couldn’t live with himself if he left Bucky behind, not even for Peggy’s sake.

He met her eyes and saw that she knew. He almost apologized, gaze flicking down to the ring on her finger, but when he looked back up she smiled at him and gave him a tight nod. She understood, and he loved her all the more for it.

“All right, Commandos,” he said. “Move out.”

They moved down the narrow halls as a unit, two by two, with Dugan and Gabe covering their rear and Steve in the lead. The floor they were on seemed to be deserted, which made a certain kind of sense; they’d likely been pulled back in order to protect the lab, and Steve’s heart raced uncomfortably fast at the thought that they might have a secondary exit direct from the lab, and that they might snatch Bucky and run before Steve even made it down the stairs.

He sped up, throwing open the door to the stairwell and taking the stairs two at a time. He reached the first landing, turned to continue, and his shield sparked as a hail of bullets greeted him. The report of the rifles was deafening in the stairwell, and Steve ducked his head behind the shield, waiting for an opening.

There was movement by his leg and he looked down, opening his mouth in shock, but before he could say anything Peggy was firing from beneath the shield. Two Hydra soldiers fell before the rest could shift their attention to her, and Steve crouched, trying to hide them both.

“What are you _doing_?” he shouted. Peggy raised an eyebrow at him, leaned out to pick off another Hydra soldier.

“Clearing a path,” she answered. From above them, another gun barked out, the echoes ringing against stone walls. Steve looked back in exasperation at Sam and Junior as they returned fire. It was all over in a second, the last two Hydra soldiers going down almost simultaneously. Steve stood, scowling at the three of them.

“I told you not to shoot in tight places,” he said. Junior and Sam exchanged a glance and shrugged.

“Peggy started it,” Junior said. Peggy paused in the act of reloading her pistol to frown at him, then at Steve.

“I had plenty of room,” she said. “The only people in front of me were Hydra. Now are we done wasting time, or would you like to convene a review board?”

“I wouldn’t bother arguing,” Dugan called from the back of the group. “She’ll eat you alive, son.” And Steve, knowing that it was true and unable to decide between protective fury and overwhelming admiration, just shook his head and continued on down the stairs.

Another group of Hydra soldiers met them at the next landing, and they were also summarily dispatched, and then the next two flights of stairs were entirely free of enemy combatants. The further down the stairs they went, the more tense Steve became. _Had_ they all escaped through some hidden back door? Was Bucky even here anymore?

Finally, they reached the bottom and he held up a hand, turning to address the Commandos in a low voice. “They let us come down here, and that means there’s something nasty waiting behind this door for us. Be careful, be alert, and we’ll all get out of here in one piece. Remember, thirty minutes and then we’re leaving, no exceptions. Got it?”

They all nodded and Steve drew a deep breath, then pivoted and kicked open the door.

 

_vii. what’s her name?_

“Stop,” Bucky says. He’s gripping the ring so hard that it has left marks on the tips of his fingers, and he hands it back to Steve with a motion as if he’s trying to get something dirty or sticky off of his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. His voice is old, so old, and he rests a wrinkled hand on Bucky’s knee for a moment before Bucky shies away from the touch. “I know this isn’t pleasant to hear.”

“Then why are you doing it?” Bucky demands, but his voice has none of the rancor that Steve expects. He only sounds tired and lonely and sorrowful. Steve watches him for a moment, the way that beloved face is painted and pinched by unimaginable pain.

“When I was returning the Stones to their proper timelines, I met the Ancient One,” Steve says slowly, testing out each word. “The one who trained Doctor Strange.”

“The wizard?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah.” Steve laughs, rubs the back of his neck. “I know it sounds nuts. But she had the Time Stone and she showed me so many possible futures…” It had been dizzying, the array of different options laid out before him; he had seen futures where he died, futures where he lived, futures where he lost everything he had ever cared about.

But there had been a terminus to all of these futures, a brightness that blinded him, and he had seen the shield and he had seen Sam holding it, pushing back against the brightness. He had seen Bucky there beside him, lending his not inconsiderable strength, but they couldn’t do it alone and Steve had screamed in frustration, unable to help his friends, only able to watch as they were pushed back.

And then he had seen the uniform, the red, white, and blue almost garish in the glare from the light, and he had seen another shield, raised alongside the one that Sam carried. And he’d seen that it wasn’t him.

It had been a woman, compact and powerful, standing fast against the encroaching destruction. She’d had her mother’s jawline, her mother’s dark hair, her mother’s determination and stubborn refusal to give up. He had seen so much of Peggy in her that his heart had skipped a beat.

And then it had skipped another, because he’d also recognized her blue eyes, her wide sensitive mouth, the perfect curve of her cheekbones. He sees them now, staring at his best friend, his husband in a different life, and he smiles sadly as he tells Bucky about her.

“It’s hard to understand,” he finishes. “I still don’t quite follow it.”

Bucky stares at the wedding ring, turning it over and over in his fingers, then finally looks up at Steve. “What’s her name?” he asks.

 

_viii. I never said you would_

The room seemed empty when they burst in, ready for a fight. Steve narrowed his eyes as he searched the lab, gesturing for the Commandos to fan out behind him. He didn’t trust this at all, but there was no guessing what sort of nasty surprises Hydra had hidden up their sleeves.

He crouched behind the shield, slowly advancing into the room, and out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. Immediately, he swung to face it and he was just in time to see a dark shape come barrelling out of the darkness towards him. It hit him like a brick wall and he tumbled onto his back, shouting for the Commandos to be ready as gunfire erupted all around them.

Everyone dove for cover as the fight broke out, leaving Steve in the middle of the lab with his assailant on his chest. Bucky stared down at him, his blue eyes cold and lifeless as he shifted his grip on a knife and lunged forward to plunge it into Steve’s chest. His prosthetic arm was not nearly as strong as the one he’d had when Steve found him in 2014, but it was surprisingly advanced and Steve struggled for a moment before he was able to summon the strength to overpower Bucky.

“Bucky!” he shouted, pushing his friend off and diving to pin him down before he could attack again. Bucky stared up at him, fury in his flat gaze as Steve leaned close. “Bucky, it’s me.”

As far as a plan went, it wasn’t much, but Steve had seen how Bucky had reacted to being called by name after decades of brainwashing. There was no possible way Hydra had been able to fully indoctrinate him this soon. Steve searched his friend’s face frantically, waiting for Bucky to fight back.

“Bucky!” he yelled again, and there it was. His face spasmed, brightness surfacing in his eyes as he stared up at Steve’s face as though seeing him for the first time.

“Steve,” he mumbled, dazed. The knife fell from his fingers and Steve released him, so relieved that it felt like the air had been knocked out of him. “Where are we? What happened?” He tried to sit up, noticed the prosthetic. His eyes grew wide in panic and pain. “Steve, what happened?”

“It’s okay, buddy, I’ve got you,” Steve said, rising into a crouch and cupping his hands around his mouth. “Commandos! Fall back!”

There were shouts of acknowledgement from around the room as the Commandos began to pull back, their formation growing tighter and tighter as they approached the door. Steve saw Peggy in the middle of the group and she gestured for him to hurry. He nodded and turned back to Bucky. All the fight had gone out of him and he slumped against a wall, his face pale as death.

“Can you run?” he asked. Bucky laughed.

“Come on, what are you, kidding me?”

Steve nodded, grinning. He could still see the pain on Bucky’s face, the confusion and conflict from the brainwashing, but it was all relatively fresh this time. It hadn’t had time to settle in to him, to really become a _part_ of him, and he felt a stab of guilt at the relief that crept through him at that realization. No matter how bad he felt about it, though, there was no denying that this was still his Bucky, not yet molded by Hydra into a haunted fragment of what he had been.

“Don’t worry, Buck,” he said, slipping his arms around Bucky and rising again. “I got you.” Bucky threw his good arm around Steve’s neck, eyes wide and startled. Something complicated and tight twisted in Steve’s chest, and then he was running, too focused on dodging through the lab to concentrate on his feelings towards Bucky.

Back up the stairs they went, Steve in the middle now with Bucky in his arms, the Commandos split into two groups to simultaneously push forward and guard their rear. Peggy ran beside Steve, her handgun drawn, her eyes steely, and he held Bucky close, swearing to himself over and over that he would never let Bucky go again.

The world was a blur of noise and shouting and gunfire. They ran up the stairs, through the hallways, their voices growing more and more triumphant as they neared their exit until finally, with a bellow of excitement, Dugan burst out into the snow, the others piling out behind him.

“Bar the door!” Peggy shouted, and Gabe shot the handle, trapping the Hydra soldiers inside. Steve waited just long enough to do a quick head count and ensure that everyone had left the base alive. Satisfied, he turned and began to run, his tireless legs carrying him into the cover of the forest and on down a game path through the trees to the agreed upon rendezvous.

The rest of the Commandos arrived shortly afterwards, panting and flushed and triumphant. Bucky rested his head on Steve’s shoulder, watching quietly as Frenchie flourished a detonator and pressed the button. There was an enormous roar as the Hydra installation was consumed by a series of explosions. Bucky watched the glow of the fire through the trees, then closed his eyes and pressed close against Steve.

Peggy told him later, after they had all recovered and settled in to normal life back in Brooklyn, that she had seen how close he held Bucky that night, the indescribable tenderness on his face when he looked down at his exhausted friend. Steve hadn’t even really known what he wanted from Bucky at that point; he knew he was attracted to men and knew that thinking about Bucky woke a fierce love in his heart, but it was difficult to reconcile those things after everything that they had been through.

But Peggy had seen it that night and she had turned it over in her mind as they made their way back to the truck. She had questioned herself for the entire drive, forcing herself to confront the many ways that this could and would change the life that she’d anticipated having with Steve. Bucky Barnes was so much more than just Steve’s friend; she’d always felt that from him, a sort of longing in the way that he looked at Steve, so similar to the way that she herself had felt for so long.

They’d ridden in silence, exhausted and exhilarated from the rescue, and made contact with the SSR the next day. Within two days of his rescue, Bucky was back in Brooklyn, tucked into the spare room in Steve’s apartment, not quite ready to face the world. And Steve was having dinner with Peggy, who was strangely pensive, and who jumped when he reached out and touched the back of her hand.

“You okay, Peg?” he asked. She smiled very slightly and took his hand between both of hers, holding it tight.

“Steve,” she said. He was quiet, sensing the gravity in her voice.

“I know there’s something between you and Bucky,” she said, hesitant, not sure how to bring it up. Steve squeezed her hand tight and looked down, color blossoming in his cheeks. “I don’t know what it is, I don’t even know if you do. But I don’t want to compete with it.” Steve’s heart dropped and he forgot all about letting Peggy speak uninterrupted.

“Peggy, please,” he said. “It’s nothing.” But the words sounded fake, even to him. She smiled at him wistfully, touched his cheek.

“I’m not exactly a stranger to this sort of thing, you know,” she said. “I worked at Bletchley Park. It’s… I know it’s supposed to be shocking, but we’ve all seen so much death and destruction. I don’t believe that love is something we can turn away from right now, whatever form it takes. And I don’t want you to have any regrets in this life, not on my account.”

Steve could only stare at her, horrified and broken-hearted. Ever since he’d gotten Bucky back, he had been turning the dilemma over in his mind. He adored Peggy, worshipped the ground that she walked on, and he wanted nothing more than to have her as his wife. But he had been through so much with Bucky, had so many things that he needed to say. Hell, he fell asleep most nights wondering what Bucky would feel like beneath him, pinned to the bed with his legs spread and his lips swollen from kissing.

He hadn’t wanted to make a decision, hadn’t wanted to even acknowledge that there was one to make, but he should have known that Peggy wouldn’t let him push everything down and live in silent agony for the rest of his life. But how was this any better? How was he supposed to be content loving Bucky when he knew that Peggy was out there still? It was an impossible situation, one which Peggy seemed to have decided for him.

“I don’t even know if he wants that,” Steve protested, but Peggy was shaking her head before he even finished.

“He does,” she said firmly. “And so do you. And I want you to have that with him.” The words looked like they cost her, but she straightened her shoulders as she said them, as though their utterance had also removed a weight from her.

“I can’t lose you, Peggy,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles gently. She laughed, sudden and genuine, and Steve frowned, confused.

“I never said you would, idiot,” she told him fondly, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Barnes and I get along perfectly well, and we do have one very important thing in common.”

And Steve had just stared at her in astonishment as she rose, settling in his lap and wrapping her arms tight around his neck.

 

_ix. the coming storm_

“Tasha,” Steve says. Their first daughter had been his and Peggy’s, a tall redhead that had inherited her mother’s brains and her father’s inability to stay out of a fight. Their second, the one he had seen carrying his shield, standing beside his friends, had been Bucky and Peggy’s, and Steve had named her Natasha.

“So we were all together,” Bucky says slowly.

“Yes,” Steve answers. It had taken time, lots of conversations that had continued well into the night, negotiating and renegotiating boundaries, but it had been worth it in the end. It had been the three of them against the world, and he had loved every second of it.

But it’s time for him to step aside, time for the future that he saw all those years ago to begin its inevitable march towards some conclusion. The Ancient One hadn’t told him which of the futures he saw was the ideal one, and so Steve had relied on his gut, had watched it all come together, and now he is finally finished.

“I don’t know how to feel about this, Steve,” Bucky says softly.

“I know,” Steve says, reaching out to cover Bucky’s hand with his own. After a moment, Bucky turns it so that their palms are pressed together, the ring held securely between them. “Neither do I. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. They stay there for a moment more, and then Bucky stands up. “I gotta go. And you probably should, too.”

“I should,” Steve agrees. Bucky turns away from him, so Steve pretends not to see the tears in his eyes. “It was good to see you again, Buck.”

He watches as Bucky rejoins Sam, watches the way that they lean against each other, supporting each other through a pain that neither of them had fully anticipated. They’ll be all right, he knows. Sam had been there for him during a particularly rough patch in his life, and he’ll be there for Bucky too.

Sam leans close, whispers something to Bucky as they walk away. Steve feels an unfamiliar pang of jealousy and closes his eyes against it. _I made my choice_ , he reminds himself, but the melancholy is hard to shake, and it has been since Peggy and Bucky died, both quietly in their sleep, almost a year apart. He’s alone now except for his daughters, but he can feel his age creeping up on him, knows it won’t be long now.

Slowly, he rewraps the rings and tucks them away in his pocket. The sun is setting, shadows gathering to leech the heat from his old bones. Steve sighs and pushes back his sleeve, checking his wristband to make sure the proper time and space coordinates are programmed in. There are a handful of things left to do and then he can rest, knowing that he’s done what he can to prepare his friends and his children for what’s coming.

There is a soft noise, like fabric ripping, and Steve is gone, leaving only a set of footprints in the grass and the lingering sensation of his presence. Away in the distance, thunder growls, heralding the coming storm.


End file.
